To date BLAC has conducted over fifty heritage survey with many different mining companies and developers.
Terra Rosa Consulting is the preferred supplier for heritage services for the Badimia People. The Director – Scott Chisholm and his team of consultants have developed a long-lasting working relationship through their core business structure. This working relationship has developed a deep and respectful knowledge of the Badimia Peoples’ traditional knowledge.
Heritage Sites on Badimia Country
There are currently 255 Registered Aboriginal Heritage Sites and Other Heritage Places within the boundaries of the Badimia People Native Title Boundary on the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage’s Register of Aboriginal Sites. The majority of these sites have been identified and registered as a result of cultural resource management surveys. Consequently, only those areas slated for future developments have been comprehensively surveyed for places of cultural significance to Badimia People.
Artefact Scatters
The abundance of artefact scatters in the archaeological record for the Badimia People native title claim is unsurprising as these are one of the most common types of heritage places found throughout the Midwest region. This is because lithic material preserves very well in a variety of conditions and therefore is often the only surviving material at a heritage place.
Man-made Structures
Man-made structures, such as stone arrangements and gnamma holes, are the next most commonly recorded heritage places in the Badimia area. The most prominent of these in Badimia Country is Kunturu, a stone arrangement on Lake Moore. In 1968 Richard Gould described the arrangement as a “perfectly preserved serpentine rock alignment more than 250 feet long, situated on the salt crust of the lake bed”. The creation of the rock alignment is attributed to the Bimara as he crawled across the lake. The Bimara then turned to stone, where the stone alignment is and resides inside the fresh-water spring nearby.
Gnamma Holes
Gnamma holes (and rock holes) are of particular value to the Badimia People, upon which they were heavily reliant in a region where many of the major water sources are salty or brackish. This reliance on ephemeral water sources such as these suggests that ancestral Badimia People were likely to have been highly seasonally mobile. Gnamma holes are most commonly encountered on granitic or pisolithic outcrops.
Rock Art
Painted rock art sites are also well represented within the heritage record. Typical rock art includes hand stencils, anthropromorphic figures, animals, geometric shapes, and lines. These are typically identified within rockshelters or overhangs, which afford suitable protection to the pigments. There are several styles of painting including spitting the paint to make a hand stencil as well as using something as a paint brush. Engraved rock art is also occasionally encountered.
Other Sites
In addition to places such as Kunturu, ceremonial and mythological sites exist in some frequency. In Badimia Country such sites are usually associated with major land forms (for instance, the hills, mesas and lakes) which punctuate the otherwise broad alluvial plains more typical of the region.
Though these occur in notably smaller numbers, other site types such as burials, rockshelters, grinding patches, quarries, modified trees, ochre sources, and culturally important natural features have been identified. Due to the limited dataset that exists for these, it is important that they are documented as they represent relatively rare aspects of the recorded Badimia Aboriginal Heritage and have the potential to offer further insight into the lives of ancestral Badimia People.